Nationalism and Sectionalism in Literature 1801-1850 Objective 2.02
Noah Webster America should record its own form of English. Became obvious as nationalism grew. American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828.
Noah Webster
Literary Renaissance Occurred in the early to mid 1800s. Americans beginning to form national and regional identity – wanted to write about it.
2 Major Groups Transcendentalists urged people to over-come the limits of their minds and embrace beauty. New Nationalists wrote of American identity and culture
Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nature (1836) Henry David Thoreau – must fight the pressure to conform to society Think of them as hippies of the 1800s.
Emerson Thoreau
New Nationalists/ Knickerbocker School Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter Ideas of Puritans Edgar Allen Poe Terror and Mystery
New Nationalists cont. James Fennimore Cooper – Last of the Mohicans Wrote of Native Americans Washington Irving – “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Alex de Tocqueville Not American but wanted to write about it. Wrote Democracy in America – told of his journeys through America Explained how the social conditions impacted both the individual and gov’t
Art and Architecture Hudson River School—group of artists beginning in the 1820s known for landscape paintings, led by Thomas Cole George Caleb Bingham—art of ordinary Americans Neoclassical Architecture made an impression in America w/ its Greek style.
Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, 1836
George Caleb Bingham, Raftsmen Playing Cards, 1847